BMJ 1997;315:184 (19 July)

Letters

Self monitoring of glucose by people with diabetes

Urine testing provides only historical information

Editor–Marilyn Gallichan raised some important issues concerning self monitoring of blood glucose concentrations but greatly underestimated its benefits in terms of health, safety, and quality of life to patients taking insulin.1 The hypoglycaemic potential of insulin is a constant worry to all patients with insulin dependent diabetes, but hypoglycaemia can be confirmed only if blood is tested. Urine testing will not help.

The comparison between the merits of testing blood glucose with those of testing urine glucose missed the point that the two tests provide quite different information and should not be regarded as old versus new or accurate versus inaccurate. Urine tests are relatively cheap and easy to use, but their interpretation for patients with insulin dependent diabetes requiring tight control is difficult because glucose can often be found in the urine at the same time as the patient has hypoglycaemia.

While urine . . . [Full text of this article]


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